Becoming an established Content Marketing Consultant is a great opportunity for experienced digital marketers, and those keen to progress into a career where they advise businesses on how to develop excellent content marketing, sharing the skills they have learned along the way.
A Content Marketing Consultant generally works on an advisory basis, supporting commercial clients who need to find new ways to improve their content marketing, or incorporate content marketing into their other promotional and advertising activities.
There are lots of reasons a firm might hire a Content Marketing Consultant, from needing training for in-house colleagues to reviewing why a strategy or marketing plan isn’t delivering the results expected, or upskilling administrative staff in a small, growing company.
To become a credible Content Marketing Consultant, you will need to have a great Content Marketing resume that shows your capabilities, from evidence and testimonials to quantifiable achievements to demonstrate the improvements and returns you have generated for previous clients.
What Does a Content Marketing Consultant Do?
Content Marketing Consultants work with teams of all sizes to help them learn how to create content marketing strategies that are aligned with their branding, target audience and objectives. Companies might need the expertise of a Content Marketing Consultant because they are competing in a high-volume industry, to gain the edge over a main competitor, or to help publicize a new product or service the best possible way.
A Content Marketing Consultant tends to work as an independent professional, working through a process with each client:
- Identifying the problems or issues with current content marketing.
- Creating a tailored strategy to assist with business growth.
- Coaching staff on good practice content creation standards and techniques.
While a lot of the role is based on in-depth knowledge of content standards and how these relate to search engine algorithms, a Content Marketing Consultant also needs to have a firm understanding of metrics, and how to translate great content marketing into tangible revenues.
Some Content Marketing Consultants will specialist in niche areas of content, such as social media, content marketing or email marketing. Others will support businesses across any content they produce, defining how to make this better and attract more interest and leads to the organization.
What Skills Do I Need to Become a Content Marketing Consultant?
Content Marketing Consultants need to possess a variety of skills and capabilities and have the professional experience to provide advice and guidance with confidence. The nature of the job means needing to communicate and collaborate with diverse teams, and businesses in varied sectors, life cycle stages and sizes, making great interpersonal skills essential.
As an overview, a high-caliber Content Marketing Consultant will have the following:
- A positive communications style, sharing ideas and thoughts in a way that feels inclusive, non-patronizing and motivates employees to feel empowered and enthusiastic about the results they can achieve. Rather than instructing a workforce on what they are doing badly, and how to fix it, a Content Marketing Consultant provides a two-way interaction to upskill and inform the business clients they work with.
- Creativity, deep diving the branding, focus and objectives of a business to drill down into what they most want to do, and how to get them there. One strategy won’t work for every business, so a Content Marketing Consultant needs to be agile and able to apply excellent problem-solving abilities to land on the right resolution.
- Superb content writing skills. The vast majority of Content Marketing Consultants have worked as specialists within the content marketing world will have well established credentials in email marketing, social media marketing and online content marketing. They’ll also be well versed in SEO techniques and how to leverage these to improve the performance of each content campaign.
Consultants often work independently, so will necessarily need to possess great time-management abilities and a strong project management skill set to handle various client requirements and time parameters, and to ensure their work is properly managed.
Content marketing can take time to yield results, so that might involve initial research and data analytics, an intensive session or several sessions working with staff, and then ongoing monitoring to see how the content produced by the business is improving.
Rather than consulting with a business on an ad hoc or one-off basis, it is more common for a Content Marketing Consultant to work with a client over the long-term, developing a marketing strategy that suits the needs of the organization, but can be adapted as they grow, and as objectives change.
What Does a Content Marketing Consultant Earn?
Consultative careers can be very well paid – but that depends on the expertise and reputation of the consultant, and how goof their track record is. As a rough idea, Content Marketing Consultants working in the US earn an average of just over $78,500 a year.
However, those with fantastic portfolios and established achievements supporting clients particularly those in high-growth and high-investment sectors can command considerably higher salaries.
For example, a Content Marketing Consultant who works with luxury retail brands and has proven their ability to turn around a marketing campaign to achieve sector-leading outcomes, or revenues that outstrip the company’s investment many times over might charge substantially more than a junior Content Marketing Consultant without any major successes.
Content Marketing Consultants can also charge rates based on the length of time they spend working with one client, whether they support one company at a time for a fixed period or take on new clients on a rolling basis.
How to Get Started as a Content Marketing Consultant
Because consultants are considered experts in their fields, it isn’t necessarily a role you can move into straight after completing your qualifications, or without prior experienced within digital marketing. That said, you don’t always need a degree-level accreditation to become a Content Marketing Consultant.
Most begin by working within content marketing or in other areas of digital marketing, learning a broad range of skills and abilities. Collating each project, campaign, or piece of work into a portfolio is a good way to begin, ensuring you have plenty of examples of your quality standards and the types of content creation you do best.
From there, you might start gathering together metrics, testimonials, and recommendations from clients, and adding these details to your portfolio. Ideally, you will have experience working in a. consultative position for a company of a similar size to the clients you’d most like to attract or working in a niche sector.
Another option is to work towards a formal content marketing qualification while working within the field of digital marketing, or applying for an apprenticeship or internship to learn from a respected Content Marketing Consultant as you expand your knowledge and skills.
For more information about current vacancies for Content Marketing Consultants, or more junior digital marketing roles than can be the first step in the ladder, please check out the latest jobs open to applicants via the Digital Marketing Jobs Board.
We have employers searching for media managers, marketing coordinators, digital marketing executives and other digital marketing professionals, with roles ranging from remote and freelance posts to permanent, full-time employment positions.
